LANGUAGE AND THE ENGLISH CIVIL SERVICE. 153 



Sanskrit and Arabic, at 500 marks each ; the reasons of this prescrip- 

 tion being, however, not the same as for the foreooino-. 



The place of language in education is not confined to the question 

 as between the ancient and the modern languages. There is a wider 

 inquiry as to the place of languages as a whole. In pursuing this 

 inquiry, we may begin with certain things that are obvious and in- 

 contestable. 



In the first place, it is apparent that if a man is sent to hold in- 

 tercourse with the people of a foreign nation, he must be able to un- 

 derstand and to speak the language of that nation. Our India civil 

 servants are, on that ground, required to master the Hindoo spoken 

 dialects. 



In the next place, if a certain range of information that you find 

 indispensable is locked up in a foreign language, you are obliged to 

 learn the language. If, in course of time, all this information is trans- 

 ferred to our native tongue, the necessity apparently ceases. These 

 two extreme suppositions will be allowed at once. There may, how- 

 ever, be an indefinite number of intermediate stages: the information 

 may be partially translated ; and it will then be a question whether 

 the trouble of learning the language should be incurred for the sake 

 of the untranslated part. Or, it may be wholly translated; but view- 

 ing the necessary defects, even of good translations, if the subject- 

 matter be supremely important, some people will think it worth while 

 to learn the language in order to obtain the knowledge in its greatest 

 purity and precisions. This is a situation that admits of no certain 

 rule. Our clergy are expected to know the original languages of the 

 Bible, notwithstanding the abundance of translations, many of which 

 must be far superior in worth and authority to the judgment of a 

 merely ordinary proficient in Hebrew and Greek. 



It is now generally conceded that the classical languages are no 

 longer the exclusive depository of any kind of valuable information, 

 as they were two or three centuries ago ; yet they are still continued 

 in the schools as if they possessed their original function unabated. 

 We do not speak in them, nor listen to them spoken, nor write in 

 them, nor read in them, for obtaining information. Why, then, are 

 they kept up? Many reasons are given, as you know. There is an 

 endeavor to show that, even in their original function, they are not 

 quite effete. Certain professions are said to rely upon them for some 

 points of information not fully communicated by the medium of Eng- 

 lish. Such is the rather indirect example of the clergy with Greek. 

 So it is said that law is not thoroughly understood without Latin, be- 

 cause the great source of law, the Roman code, is written in Latin, 

 and is in many points untranslatable. Further, it is contended that 

 Greek philosophy cannot be fully mastered without a knowledge of 

 the language of Plato and Aristotle. But an argument that is re- 

 duced to these examples must be near its vanishing-point. Not one 



